Creative Control

We’re working on the next season of Creative Control. In the meantime, we’re revisiting this still-relevant topic: doctors on platforms like TikTok and Twitter making medicine less of a mystery for people—and becoming celebrities along the way.But the ethics of being a medical influencer are a bit hazy. We’ve seen how misinformation can run rampant on social media, and it doesn’t take much for anyone to gain a following, no matter their credentials. So what are the implications of doctors being influencers, and is it actually making us healthier?

While we’re on break, working on the next season of Creative Control, we wanted to revisit this throwback episode about copyright law and dance, and how some choreographers are fighting to get their work protected as intellectual property. It’s part of the wider issue of how popular trends can spread online without proper credit or compensation—something creators of color, in particular, have been calling out.

We’re taking a little break right now while we work on the next season. We’ll be back soon with new conversations and stories about what’s changing in the creator economy. In the meantime, in honor of March Madness, we wanted to revisit this throwback episode about the NCAA changing their rules to finally allow college athletes to make money from their own name, image, and likeness.

Over the past few years, it seems that celebrities and influencers are increasingly choosing to have their own brand instead of simply endorsing a product. Take Emma Chamberlain, for example. When she was on the podcast, she explained why, as an avid coffee lover, she started her own brand instead of doing a regular endorsement. To dig into this a little more, we spoke to Marian Leitner-Waldman, founder and CEO of canned wine company Archer Roose, about why she chose director/actor Elizabeth Banks as not just a celebrity endorser but a partner in the company and its chief creative officer.

We’re taking a little break while we work on the next season. In the meantime, we’re sharing an improv workshop from Fast Company’s Innovation Festival last year, led by actor, singer, and improvisor extraordinaire Wayne Brady. He gets into the importance of active listening in improv, and focusing on inclusion in his growing media empire.

We’re taking a little break right now while we work on the next season. But we’ll be back soon with new conversations and stories about what’s changing in the creator economy. In the meantime, we wanted to share a conversation from Fast Company’s Innovation Festival last fall. Associate editor Yaz Gagne moderated the panel, Monetizing Your Brand in the Creator Economy, featuring Tracy Chan from SoundCloud, Ami Gan from OnlyFans, Ritu Khanna from Shopify, and entrepreneur and content creator Jackie Aina.

Last week we talked to some creators about how they’re approaching Black History Month this year. If you haven’t already listened to that episode, please check it out. And for this episode, I’m keeping the conversation going with Tiffany Hardin, founder and CEO of Gild Creative Group. Tiffany shared her perspective as an influencer marketing agent who has all the do’s and, most importantly, don’ts of how brands should be thinking about Black History Month.

Black History Month is almost upon us. It’s a time meant to celebrate Black culture, but as we’ve seen year after year, it’s also a time for racist trolls, tone-deaf brand campaigns, and corporate platitudes that amount to little change if any at all. It’s a lot to deal with, so I wanted to explore how Black creators are handling it all. Hear how Tyra Blizzard (@tblizzy), Garrison Hayes (@garrisonhayes), and Millana Snow (@millanasnow) are navigating February this year.

Back in the fall of 2021, a whistleblower named Frances Haugen dropped a bombshell. She released what would become known as the Facebook Papers, a massive set of internal documents that essentially showed the harmful impact Facebook and Instagram can have on society and politics. Deeper still, the documents showed that Facebook knew of those dangers but seemed to put profits over everything.It’s easy to forget just how big a story this was, given our relentless news cycle. So, to understand what impact the Facebook Papers really had, I spoke to Hayley Tsukayama, a senior legislative activist from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Bill Burton, a political consultant working with Frances Haugen.

We’ve discussed where the creator economy is headed this year. And there are general trends that I do think will be important to keep in mind in the short term. But what about the long term? The creator economy is still relatively young. So what will it look like once the dust and hype really settle down? Dmitry Shapiro, cofounder and CEO of app platform Koji, has some thoughts that are pretty surprising. For starters, the creator economy as we know it is dying.